Alec Baldwin Responds to Hilaria Baldwin's Heritage Controversy

Alec Baldwin has released a nearly 10 minute long video that seems to be a defense of his wife Hilaria Baldwin amid the allegations that she has faked her heritage and her accent. Hilaria was born in Boston, Massachusetts as “Hillary Hayward-Thomas,” but many are pointing to interviews where she apparently claimed to be from Spain. There are also numerous videos of her speaking with a Spanish accent.

“A bit about me. I’ve seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture. This is something I take very seriously, and for those who are asking— I’ll reiterate my story, as I’ve done many times before. I was born in Boston and grew up spending time with my family between Massachusetts and Spain. My parents and sibling live in Spain and I chose to live here, in the USA. We celebrate both cultures in our home—Alec and I are raising our children bilingual, just as I was raised. This is very important to me. I understand that my story is a little different, but it is mine, and I’m very proud of it,” Hilaria said.

Alec‘s video started off as a place where he expressed his dismay over Facebook as a social media platform. The video morphed into him speaking about negativity and things being said about people in his life that he loves. He never mentions Hilaria by name in the video.

“We live in a world now where we’re hidden behind the anonymity of social media. People feel that they can say anything. They can say anything. They probably would like to do anything if they weren’t at risk of getting caught and going to prison,” Alec said. “Because they can’t do that, because that involves real commitment to do something, to express those feelings, they say things, no profile picture very often, sometimes yes, no identifying features there, hidden behind the anonymity of social media, they want to just shoot it all over you and spray it all over you, their venom and their hate.”

“And you have to consider the source. There’s things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous,” he continued.

Meanwhile, Alec‘s oldest daughter Ireland spoke to the controversy as well and even explained Hilaria‘s infamous cucumber moment.

If you missed this story and need a refresher, click inside to see how this all originally started…

Some of the seemingly conflicting footage – as documented by a popular thread on Twitter by @lenibriscoe, as well as writer Tracie Egan Morrissey on Instagram – includes her seemingly not knowing how to say “cucumber” in English, and then not having an accent in other videos.